Methods and apparatus for inserting content into conversations in on-line and digital environments

ABSTRACT

Content is inserted into conversations hosted on a takeoff site using creatives that provide lures and links to other material that users engaged in the conversation might find helpful and relevant. Such insertions are made in a contextually meaningful fashion through the use of a matching and decision process that determines best candidate creatives and an appropriate time and place for their insertion into the conversation.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This is a CONTINUATION of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/040,092,filed Mar. 3, 2011, which is a CONTINUATION of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 12/851,489, filed Aug. 5, 2010, each of which is assigned tothe assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein byreference.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to methods and systems for insertingappropriate links into an ongoing conversation, which links point toother material or people that users engaged in the conversation mightfind helpful and relevant to the conversation.

BACKGROUND

The World Wide Web (WWW) or simply, the “Web” is the well-knowncollection of interlinked hypertext documents hosted at a vast number ofcomputer resources (“hosts”) communicatively coupled to one another overnetworks of computer networks known as the Internet. These documents,which may include text, multimedia files and images, are typicallyviewed as web pages with the aid of a web browser—a software applicationrunning on a user's computer system. Collections of related web pagesthat can be addressed relative to a common uniform resource locator(URL) are known as websites, and are typically hosted on one or more webservers accessible via the Internet.

In recent years, websites featuring user-generated content (UGC), thatis content created and posted to websites by end-users, have becomeincreasingly popular. UGC accounts for a wide variety of content,including news, gossip, audio-video productions, photography and socialcommentary, to name but a few. Content of this sort may be presented inany of a variety of forms, including web logs (blogs), commentsregarding website editor-created content (e.g., user reviews of productsbeing offered for sale at a website), status updates on socialnetworking sites and question and answer databases commonly known asforums.

Advertisers were quick to recognize the potential power of the Web as itconcerns access to potential consumers of goods and services. Models forcapitalizing on the insertion of advertisements into websites quicklysprang up. Such advertisements came in various forms, including bannerads, which appear across portions of a web page, and sponsored links,which typically appear in designated sections of search result pages.However, many Web users find such advertisements to be annoying, in thatthey are often placed in locations of a web page that interrupt theuser's reading or interaction with content on the page, contextuallyirrelevant, and/or otherwise disruptive of the web browsing experience.The situation is compounded when dealing with websites featuring UGCbecause contributors to such sites often have a low tolerance foradvertisements on the sites that are perceived as not relevant to thecontent. At the same time, advertising is one of the primary ways inwhich website operators offset the cost of producing content andotherwise maintaining websites.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In various embodiments, the present invention provides methods andsystems for inserting content into a takeoff page hosted on a takeoffsite. The content (referred to as creatives) provide links deemed to beappropriate, contextually and/or otherwise, for insertion in conjunctionwith a message hosted at the takeoff page. The message may be aconstituent of a broader conversation hosted at the takeoff page and thelinks included in the creatives may point to material that users engagedin the conversation might, hopefully will, find helpful and/or relevantto the conversation.

The present process may make use of a matching engine, typically hostedon a server other than that hosting the takeoff site. The matchingengine is configured to construct a set of candidate creatives. That is,for each of a plurality of landing sites and templates consisting ofsome combination of text, audio and/or visual elements, and on the basisof similarities between content on the takeoff page, content onrespective landing pages of the landing sites, and content of eachrespective one of the templates, the matching engine creates a pool ofcandidate landing pages and candidate templates for the takeoff page.Then, a set of candidate creatives are created by combining URLs of thecandidate landing pages with the candidate templates. These candidatecreatives may be ranked in the context of the message on the takeoffpage, and from the ranked list of the candidate creatives, a set ofthese creatives may be selected for display in conjunction with theconversation at the takeoff page. One or more (or in some cases none) ofthe selected creatives may then be delivered to the takeoff site anddisplayed in conjunction with the conversation at the takeoff page.

Determining which, if any, of the creatives to be displayed may includeincorporating information concerning user interaction with previousinstances of the candidate creatives when inserted into takeoff pages,information concerning experience with previous instances of thecandidate templates, or portions thereof (each candidate template can beregarded as including one or more slots, including such elements as anintroduction, a call to action and/or a photo), and/or informationconcerning statistics relating to the conversation on the takeoff site.Determining which, if any, of the creatives to be displayed may includeaccounting for campaign management requirements. Further, determiningwhich, if any of the creatives to be displayed may include informationabout the devices on which the creative may be displayed. For example,screen size limit or text string length limit.

Hence, the present invention provides means for creating links betweencontent of different modes, for example a takeoff page made up of UGCand a landing page comprised of curated content, or a takeoff page madeup of curated content and a landing page comprised one of UGC, or anycombination of the foregoing. These and other examples of the featuresand use of the present invention are described further below.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention is illustrated by way of example, and notlimitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates components of a network in which embodiments of thepresent invention may be implemented;

FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a creative for insertion in aconversation hosted at a takeoff page in accordance with embodiments ofthe present invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a process for creating, matching andinserting creatives within a conversation hosted at a takeoff page inaccordance with embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 4 illustrates a components of a computer system in which computerreadable instructions instantiating the methods of the present inventionmay be stored and executed; and

FIG. 5 illustrates a software architecture for various ones of thecomputer systems illustrated in FIG. 1.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In view of the above-described shortcomings of current Web-basedadvertising models, the present inventors have recognized a need for anew paradigm for inserting advertising and/or other content intowebsites or other venues at which UGC, and, more generally,conversational content, is hosted. Accordingly, in various embodimentsthe present invention provides methods and systems to insertadvertisements or other content, usually in the form of sounds,pictures, text, and/or hyperlinks (“links”) or other direction-aidingmaterials, into an ongoing conversation (often instantiated in the formof UGC hosted on a social media or other website, but may also includeother forms of conversations, such as instant message (IM) or similarconversations, Twitter™ tweets, social network page commentary, e-mailthreads, forum-hosted discussion boards, etc., some of which may beinstantiated within the confines of a particular software applicationinstead of or in addition to being posted at one or more websites),which point to other material (e.g., material accessible via a URL) thatusers (e.g., participants in the ongoing conversation or others that aremonitoring the conversation) might find helpful and relevant to thesubject conversation. The paradigm is thus one of a conversational aid,rather than a mere mechanism for inserting advertising.

By analyzing the contents of sites such as web pages, forums and otherforms of social media, systems configured in accordance with the presentinvention are able to insert links and associated text at appropriatepoints, directing users to other online material that may be helpful tothem. To maximize the relevance of these suggestions to users, thesesystems are preferably designed to detect and respond to importantconversational indicators, such as particular types of speech actexpressed within an online posting. The systems envisage the ability todetect speech acts at a general level, incorporating a taxonomy ofutterances that can be categorized according to factors such as theirpurpose, their expressed psychological state (sentiment), and theirpropositional content. Typical taxonomies include categories such asassertives: The Sky is Blue, directives: Can you tell me the way to SanJose?, and expressives: I'm feeling very badly about that. By matchingthe type of speech act presented by an author against the content from aset of potential recommended links, the present systems can select anddisplay those whose tenor, tone and meaning are most relevant to theauthored utterance. For example, a query directive could be linked tocontent that provides either a direct answer to the question beingasked, or to other material that may be helpful. An expression ofsadness could be linked to content that acknowledges the author'semotion.

In one example of a system configured in accordance with the presentinvention, the system includes a component that focuses on the detectionof queries within a stream of textual content. There are, broadlyspeaking, two types of queries:

-   -   explicit queries—in which the author poses a specific question        that requests a response from the reader(s), either in the form        of a piece of information or a yes/no answer: Who is buried in        Grant's Tomb?    -   implicit queries—in which the author makes a statement that        implicitly asks for help and/or information from readers: If        only I had a way to fix problem X with my bike.        The present system uses a form of supervised learning, in which        a corpus of utterances manually labeled as queries is provided        as a training set, along with a set of utterances labeled as        non-queries.

The first task of this system is to assess which textual features areimportant for distinguishing between queries and non-queries. This isaccomplished by first analyzing the training corpus mentioned above andextracting every unigram, bi-gram and tri-gram. Tokens used in then-gram analysis include all words and all punctuation in the corpusutterances. Next, the system calculates the mutual information betweenthe occurrence of a selected n-gram within an utterance and whether theutterance is a query or a non-query. The mutual information is astandard measure of the “correlation” between two variables.

For a given n-gram, we define the following two binary variables:

x=n-gram occurs in a given utterance (x=1 if it occurs, x=0 if it doesnot)

y=utterance is a query (y=1 if the utterance is a query, y=0 if it isnot)

We also define p(x,y) as the probability across all utterances in thetraining corpus that the selected n-gram occurs in an utterance and thatthe utterance is a query. Similarly, we define p1(x) and p1(y) as therespective marginal distributions of p(x,y). These distributions are allstraightforward to compute from the training corpus. The MutualInformation is then given by

MI=Sum_(—) x,yp(x,y)log [p(x,y)/p1(x)*p1(y)]

Having computed the mutual information for each possible n-gram acrossthe training corpus, the system now ranks each n-gram according to itsmutual information measure. Table 1 below shows an example of such aranking, from a fictitious corpus.

TABLE 1 Example of Ranking of n-grams according to Mutual InformationMeasure Unigrams MI Bi-grams MI Tri-grams MI ? 0.95 Aren't you 0.98Could you 0.91 please have 0.93 Sick of 0.97 How can I 0.90 you 0.91Microsoft 0.95 If I put 0.75 word any 0.82 Autocaps 0.88 Where can 0.62yes you ham 0.81 I am 0.85 What on 0.61 earthFeature selection is now finalized by selecting a threshold, or set ofthresholds, for the mutual information, below which the n-gram inquestion is ignored. In the above fictitious corpus, for example, theunigram “?” is very highly correlated with an utterance being aclassified as a query, and so is retained as an important feature.

After selecting a set of important n-gram features, the system istrained by presenting the known training exemplars of query andnon-query utterances to a binary support vector machine. The resultingpredictive classifier is then used, as necessary, to predict theclassification of any previously unseen utterance as either query ornon-query. A variant of the above approach, in which groups of selectedtokens are collapsed and treated as a single mega-token, e.g. pronountokens (I, we, anyone, you, he, she, they) all counted as a singlemega-token pronoun_subject, may also be used.

In discussing the features of the present invention, we will use theterm “creative” to designate that portion of the content being insertedinto the conversation which is intended for presentation to theconversation participants and/or others (i.e., intended to be viewed bythem), but this should not be read as restricting the present inventionsolely to means for inserting commercial content. By creatives, we meana broader construct, which includes some combination of theabove-mentioned links (or other direction-aiding materials), and anytext, audio and/or visual elements.

As discussed below, creatives may be defined by templates, which mayinclude positions for introductory words or phrases, themes, calls toaction, URLs of landing pages, etc. In effect, these templates define asort of slot grammar for the creatives. This allows for variants ofcreatives where one or more items of the creative are fixed and theother components are iterated to form different combinations. Such setsof creatives may be referred to as a variation set.

The location(s) at which the creatives are presented (which is,generally, also the location at which the conversation is taking place)is referred to as a “takeoff site”, and the location(s) to which usersare directed when they click on one of the links (or follow thedirection-aiding materials) is referred to as a “landing site”, but thisshould not be read as restricting the present invention solely towebsites. In the context of takeoff and landing sites, the term site isintended to encompass, respectively, any environment where conversationsmay occur and any environment to which the conversation participants (orothers reading the conversation) might be directed.

Takeoff sites include takeoff pages, at which individual conversations,or portions thereof, may be displayed, instantiated or presented.Landing sites include landing pages, at which the content deemed to beof interest to the conversation participants (or others reading theconversation) may be hosted or otherwise made accessible. Thus, while atakeoff site is typically a social media site at which users are engagedin some sort of network-enabled social conversation with one or moreother users, this need not necessarily be the case and the term may alsoencompass software applications in which conversations are hosted aswell as IM threads, etc. Likewise, landing sites can consist of eitherother on-line conversations on social media sites (including, but notlimited to, the same site as the takeoff site) or sites containingcurated content, but may also be software applications, IM threads, etc.The aim is to enrich a user's social media experience, and also enhancethe value of curated content and existing conversational threads, byproviding users with natural entry points to new conversations that keyoff important elements of a conversation which they are already viewingor engaging in.

Creatives may be portions of larger constructs which we refer to as“payloads”. A payload may include content in addition to a creative,which other content is not itself intended for display to conversationparticipants or others, but which may be used to direct placement of thecreative within a takeoff page, to gather statistics from the takeoffpage, or provide for or perform another function. For example, a payloadmay include computer-readable instructions or computer-interpretabletags or other information. In some instances, a creative will be thesole constituent of a payload, but this is not necessarily so.

To better understand the context in which the present methods andsystems operate, consider the network 100 illustrated in FIG. 1.Included in this network are various servers 102 a-102 n, each hostingone or more takeoff sites 104 a-104 n. Each takeoff site 104 may includeone or more takeoff pages 106 a-106 p. As mentioned above, the takeoffsites may be social media sites in which users are engaged in some sortof on-line social conversation with other users, but may be any sites atwhich UGC is posted (e.g., in the form of an on-line conversation).Hence, the takeoff pages may be forum pages, blogs, social networksites, chat windows, product or other review pages, etc.

Also part of network 100 are a number of servers 108 a-108 m, hostinglanding sites 110 a-110 m, any or each of which may be made up of aplurality of landing pages 112 a-112 q. Notice that a server 102 hostinga takeoff site 104 with one or more takeoff pages 106 may also host oneor more landing sites 114 a-114 s, any or each of which may include oneor more landing pages 116 a-116 r. That is, any server may host anycombination of takeoff and/or landing sites. When we refer to content ona takeoff site or landing site, we mean to include content that islocated on a particular takeoff page of a takeoff site or landing pageof a landing site, as appropriate.

The takeoff and landing sites are accessed by users via client systems118 a-118 s. The client systems may, in some cases, be computer systems,such as personal computers or the like, but more generally may be anycomputer-based or processor-based device that executes applicationsoftware which allows the content of the takeoff/landing site to berendered for display to the user on a display device. For example,client systems may include computer systems, mobile devices such asiPads™, smart phones, mobile phones, etc., and the application softwaremay be web browser software such as Microsoft Corporation's InternetExplorer™, Apple Inc.'s Safari™, or Google Inc.'s Chrome™, or instantmessaging software such as Apple Inc.'s iChat™, America Online Inc.'sAIM™, etc. Such applications are typically stored in one or morecomputer readable storage devices accessible to one or more processorsof the subject client system and, when executed, cause the processor(s)to perform the operations necessary to render the subject sites/pagesfor display at the subject system (e.g., via a display devicecommunicatively coupled to the processor). The various constituents ofnetwork 100 are communicatively coupled to one another via one or morecomputer/data networks 130, which may include the Internet and othernetworks coupled thereto. The precise nature of network 130 is notcritical to the present invention.

Of course, network 100 also includes server 120, which hosts a matchingengine 122 and a decision engine 124. The matching and decision enginestogether implement an embodiment of the present invention, however, inother embodiments the functions of these two engines may be combined ina single computer-implemented entity or in multiple distributedentities. Accordingly, the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 1 should beregarded as merely a convenient example for purposes of the followingdiscussion and not as a limitation of the present invention.

Matching engine 122 is configured for the automatic detection of variousfeatures within a subject takeoff site 104, landing site 110 andcreatives, respectively, that enable the creatives, when inserted intothe on-line conversation present on the takeoff site, to act asattractive lures, inducing users (e.g., users associated with clientsystems 118 a-118 s) to explore (via selection of the links included inthe creatives) material present on the landing site(s) that is relevantto the conversation on the takeoff site. In some cases the creatives,including their associated links to the landing sites, are theadvertisements or ads referred to above.

Creatives may be fashioned using templates and, in one embodiment of theinvention, a library of templates is stored in and obtained from atemplates database 126, which is communicatively coupled to the matchingengine. This templates database may be hosted at the same or a differentserver than the matching engine. A separate (or common) database 128 oflanding page URLs is also maintained (either at server 120 or anotherserver) and is likewise communicatively coupled and accessible to thematching engine 122.

Among the features which the matching engine may be configured to detectis textual similarity between text found on the takeoff site, thelanding site and the templates. Of course, there are other importantsignals that can trigger associations in a user's mind, such as thedetection of particular speech acts in the takeoff site, as noted above.For example, the detection of implicit or explicit queries can be usedto trigger the presentation of a link to a landing site that eitheraddresses the query directly or provides some helpful information to thequestioner. The present system thus provides a framework for blendingtogether multiple features in the creative selection process.

As noted above, the term speech act is intended to refer to a specificutterance on a takeoff site. The canonical example is a “question”. Auser can communicate that an utterance is a question by the use of aquestion mark. Hence, the matching engine is configured to monitortakeoff sites (takeoff pages), looking for question marks (e.g.,identified by ASCII code or other means), and then examine the precedingtext to determine what question is being posed. Of course there are manyother ways that users express need for information in conversations. Forexample, in a help forum, the statement of a problem may be an implicitquestion, e.g., “My monitor has wavy lines.” This can be regarded as arequest for an explanation and help with the problem. Accordingly, thematching engine is configured to monitor and parse the content oftakeoff sites looking for such problem statements. Other speech actswhich the matching engine may be configured to interpret includeassertions, complaints, requests for action, and so on.

Thus, creatives may be regarded as the combination of a template and alink to a landing site/page. Creatives are not, however, purelyarbitrary sentences; they are designed to have a structure tailored tothe context of the conversation in which they are to be inserted. Asillustrated in FIG. 2, a creative 200 may be thought of as consisting of“slots”, including a slot 202 for a template and another slot 204 for aURL (or other direction aiding material) to the landing site/page. Thetemplates 202 may be made up of an introduction 206, which is indentedto identify the reason and source of message, e.g., “for moreinformation about x, y, z, . . . ”, or “We at company x believe that youcan get valuable sources of help at . . . ”; and a call to action 208,which invites the user to do something. The minimal form of such aninvitation may be to click on a link (i.e., to select a link to thelanding site by executing a mouse click while the screen cursordisplayed on a client system is indicating the URL portion of thecreative), but the call to action can go beyond this to some form ofcognitive action like learn, study, understand, see, etc.

The entries or content for each slot of a creative may be derived frombackground knowledge or experience of an operator or administrator of anad-insertion service that operates server 120 (e.g., an advertisingprofessional who might have developed certain kinds of preferredintroductions for different situations) as well as content gleanedautomatically from the takeoff and landing sites or related domaincontent (e.g., Wikipedia™ content regarding a particular subject orcontent from similar conversations). Concepts (or themes) are sets ofwords that express some fundamental meaning of the domain, e.g., whendiscussing automobiles, the term “sports utility vehicle” has a certainconnotation, and such concepts can be entities or properties ofentities, such as “SSRI side effects”, or user intentions like “greatvalue deal”. The introduction will tend to be the template componentthat contains references to such concepts, e.g., “for information aboutSSRI side effects, . . . ”, while the call to action will tend toreference the user cognitive action to be taken and a landing pageaddress. Of course, template slots other than just introductions andcalls to action may also be present in the templates and, if present,these too would be populated when creating the templates database. Forexample, a slot called “conversational reference”, which can containreferences to content or properties of the conversation, may beemployed. Or, some templates may have two possible calls to action,e.g., “do x OR do y”. The full set of creatives is, therefore, the setof all possible compositions of the elements from each of the slots.

In accordance with the present invention, the template and landing pagedatabases 126, 128 may be populated on an on-going basis and used toformulate the creative(s). In the case of the templates database 126,this involves populating each of the introduction and call to actionslots with candidates and storing the results. That is, server 120(e.g., the matching engine or a separate template creation engine (notshown in detail)) may automatically create all possible combinations ofintroductions and calls to action (the product of the two) and storethese combinations in template database 126. For the landing pagedatabase, a crawl, an API call or other content gathering means may beemployed to populate database 128. The full inventory of possiblecreatives may then be created by appending all possible landing pageURLs from the landing page database to each template from the templatedatabase and storing the results in a creative database 132. Creativesmay be created in advance and/or real time (or quasi-real time), forexample in response to a trigger.

Once the various databases have been populated (assuming they are used),the essence of the matching process is the detection of similarities(e.g., textual similarities) between three elements: 1) content on aspecific takeoff page, 2) content on a specific candidate landing page,and 3) the contents of the candidate creative presented to be presentedto the user on the takeoff page and pointing to the landing page.

In order to better make this point, an example may be helpful. Considerthe textual content of a conversation on a takeoff site such as a forum.A single conversation generally consists of a series of individualmessages contributed by a set of authors: the initial message is usuallytermed a “post”, and is typically followed by some number of “replies”.The initial post that seeds the conversation typically consists of twoparts: a title, usually a single sentence or question, and a body, anarrative that follows the post title. The replies typically onlyconsist of narrative entries, with no title.

The matching engine 122 fetches and stores (in a message store 130) thecontents of a given message M (either the initial post or one of itsreplies) upon encountering it for the first time. It then analyses thecontents of the message and stores it (again, e.g., in a designatedsection of the message store 130, which may be a computer readablestorage medium such as a non-volatile memory, hard disk, or the like) invector representation form, denoted V(M). In one example, we use a bagof words representation model, whereby each position in the vector isassociated with a word token, and the value at a given position in thevector represents the importance of the associated token within themessage M. Importance can be measured in several different ways,including:

-   -   A. term frequency (tf): the number of times that the word token        appears in the message; or    -   B. tf-idf: term frequency multiplied by the inverse document        frequency (i.e., the inverse of the rate of occurrence of the        term across all documents in the corpus at hand).        When generating the representation V(M) of a given message, a        service provider may choose to weight word tokens within a post        title more strongly than words that occur in the post body. It        is also often advisable to use normalized vectors when        generating similarity scores between vectors. In the following,        the symbol ̂ is used to denote a vector that has been        normalized.

In addition to analysing and storing the contents of new takeoff pages,the matching engine analyses and stores the contents of the pool ofcandidate templates, and the pool of candidate landing pages. Asmentioned, the candidate landing pages are typically obtained by eitherrecieving a content feed, making an API call or performing a crawl ofone or more landing sites and the candidate creatives are typicallygenerated either by hand or by a set of heuristics based on textualanalysis of the respective takeoff and landing sites. The candidatetemplates and candidate landing pages are, like the messages on takeoffpages, represented in vector form based on a bag of words model, V(T)denoting the vector representation of template T, and V(L) denoting thevector representation of landing page L.

Given a particular message (or group of messages) M, candidate templateT, and candidate landing page L, the matching engine 122 may, in oneembodiment of the invention, calculate a textual similarity score asfollows:

Score_textual=V(M)̂·{W _(—) TV(T)̂+W _(—) LV(L)̂}̂

The dot operator (“·”) above denotes a simple pairwise dot productbetween the respective vector arguments. The weights W_T and W_L areadjustable weights defined by the service provider, which weights allowfor emphasizing the relative importance of matching template text to agiven takeoff page message over that of the landing page content byselecting W_T to be greater than W_L, for example.

With this scoring function in mind, an example of a process 300 fordetermining the best creatives to provide on a given takeoff site isillustrated in FIG. 3.

Initially, at 302, a pool of N(L) candidate landing pages L isspecified. This pool may include some or all of the landing page URLsfrom landing page database 128. In the event fewer than all of thelanding page URLs from the database are included in the pool, the subsetof candidates may be stored separately or otherwise indicated throughthe use of appropriate flags in the database records.

At 304, a pool of N(T) of candidate templates T that are relevant insome way to the landing pages is determined. This may be done by manualor computational analysis of the landing and/or takeoff pages, asspecified above. This pool may include some or all of the candidatesfrom templates database 126. In the event fewer than all of thetemplates from the database are included in the pool, the subset ofcandidates may be stored separately or otherwise indicated through theuse of appropriate flags in the database records.

Next, the matching engine (or a separate creative formation engine)constructs a set of N(T)*N(L) candidate creatives 306. Each creativeconsists of the text for template T and the URL for landing page L,i.e., the information to be displayed on a takeoff page.

For any given takeoff message, M, obtained by the matching engine 308,the set of N(T)*N(L) creatives are ranked against message M using theScore_textual formula described above 310. The matching engine discardsall but the top, “p”, creatives in the ranking, where p is anoperator-defined threshold (e.g., m=20, etc.) 312. These p creatives arepassed to a decision engine 124.

From the top p creatives, the decision engine selects “q” creatives tobe displayed at the takeoff site 314, where q may be a serviceprovider-defined parameter, e.g., 1 or more, or may be determineddynamically by the decision engine. The decision about how manycreatives to display may be based on a number of criteria and may resultin no creatives being displayed for a given takeoff message M. Forexample, in making such determinations the decision engine may beconfigured to take into account factors such as information deliveredfrom the landing page, payload constituents other than the creative,and/or conversational statistics regarding the takeoff page, etc.Conversational statistics of this nature may include informationregarding how frequently the conversation is being updated, the lasttime the conversation was updated, the results attributable topreviously displayed creatives, and so on.

If creatives are to be provided for display, the decision engine passesthe q creatives (or links to same) to the subject takeoff site, wherethe q creatives are displayed near (i.e., in a contextually relevantlocation for) takeoff message M 316. For example, the creatives may bedisplayed next in order in the conversation thread or may be displayedalongside the conversation thread so as not to be disruptive thereto.This may be accomplished through the use of instructions included withthe creative in the payload, code injected into the takeoff page, or bycode in a software application, which code or instructions direct theplacement of the creatives from server 120. The process continues forfurther takeoff page messages 318 or quits 320, according to serviceprovider instruction, number of iterations per takeoff site, or otherindicator.

The present invention thus determines for a given message (or group ofmessages) in a conversation (e.g., an on-line conversation presented ata takeoff page), a best-available combination of a template and suitablelanding page whose contents, taken together, match (or are mostcontextually relevant for) the contents of that message (or group ofmessages). If there is a sufficiently strong match, that template andthe URL of the landing page (or links to same) are provided for displayon the takeoff page (e.g., in a contextually relevant location withrespect to the takeoff message), thereby providing a recommendation tothe people engaged in or monitoring the conversation of additionalcontent that can enhance their conversational experience.

The matching procedure described above provides a method for selectingrelevant creatives based on textual data available from the takeoffpage(s), templates and landing page(s). This process may be enhanced totake into account other information, for example feedback available fromusage logs that track user interaction with the creatives, such asmouseovers or clicks, and/or subsquent user actions, such as productpurchases or page visits within a landing site. That is, an adaptivecomponent which takes into account user behavior can be added to theabove-described matching procedure by, for example, altering the scoreof a given landing page depending on the clickthrough response acreative has received in the past, user behavior at the landing site, orother user behavior of interest.

Further, the process of building templates may lead to pools oftemplates that are strongly related by a common thematic element.Consider for example the following templates:

-   -   A. For more information on type II diabetes, please look at the        following site . . .    -   B. You might find more about type II diabetes at . . .    -   C. Following up on your concern about type II diabetes, you        could be interested in . . . .        The theme “type II diabetes” is common to all three of the        creatives above. As noted above, any set of creatives that all        contain a specified common theme may be regarded as an example        of a variation set. If the pool of creatives supports        non-trivial variation sets, the creatives comprising that        variation set (or a subset thereof) may be incorporated into the        criteria for selecting the top p creatives for consideration or        the final q creatives to be provided for display. For example,        the scoring function described above can be modified as follows:

Score_overall=Score_textual+ln(Clicks L+e)+ln(Clicks_(—) B)

where Clicks_L is the number of times that creative L has been selected(e.g., the URL within creative L has been selected) by users, andClicks_B is the number of times that the creatives other than L butwithin the same variation set B as creative L have been selected byusers. In some cases, only representative creatives from any givenvariation set potentially provides an enhanced user experience throughcreative diversification. Hence, it may be desirable to limit the numberof creatives to be displayed from any given variation set for a givenmessage instance.

In addition to the similarity measures and click-based measuresdiscussed above, other criteria can also be used to provide augmentedrules for triggering the presentation of one or more creatives against agiven takeoff message. These include the overall sentiment of themessage, and the type of speech act that it represents (e.g., aquestions vs. a statement, etc.).

The foregoing discussion highlights the ability of the present system toprovide system operators with “conversational strategies”—that is,strategies for content insertions in conversations. For example, recallthat in the construction of a creative there are a number of “slots”that can be filled. If we regard the “theme” as one such slot, then fora fixed theme, the content of the other creative slots can be permittedto vary and the set of results will be thematically invariant, butotherwise distinct creatives. Different ones of these creatives can thenbe used within one or more conversational contexts and the resultsmonitored to determine which is the best set of creative content for thedefined theme. Stated differently, the present infrastructure allows adetermination of a solution to the question, which creative content isbest for a given theme.

Other problem constructs may involve determining the best time to inserta creative into a conversation. For example, analysis of the results ofinserting creatives into conversations of varying conversationalvelocity (or into one conversation under conditions of differentconversational velocity) may reveal information that allows serviceproviders to chose optimum or near optimum times to insert futurecreatives so as to maximize the likelihood that URLs associated withthose creatives will be selected by participants in the conversation.

The sum of the results from these kinds of learning instances(facilitated by the above-described infrastructure) gives rise toconversational strategies. Stated differently, the present inventionprovides means for determining what theme to match with what creativecontent, when best to insert creatives in a conversation, and a host ofother information relative to deciding which content to insert in whichconversations and when. Such decision means are embodied in the two stepprocess that matches creatives and the content from takeoff pages andthen creatives plus takeoff pages with appropriate landing pages.

As is apparent from the foregoing discussion, aspects of the presentinvention involve the use of various computer systems and computerreadable storage media having computer-readable instructions storedthereon. FIG. 4 provides an example of a computer system 400 that isrepresentative of any of the servers or client systems discussed herein.Note, not all of the various computer systems may have all of thefeatures of computer system 400. For example, certain of the serversdiscussed above may not include a display inasmuch as the displayfunction may be provided by a client computer communicatively coupled tothe server. Such details are not critical to the present invention.Computer systems such as computer system 400 may be referred to by othernames, for example as hand-held devices, mobile devices, smart phones,multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based electronic devices, digitalsignal processor-based devices, networked computer systems,minicomputers, mainframe computers, personal computers, servers, laptopcomputers, tablet computers, and the like. Such labels are not criticalto the present invention.

Computer system 400 includes a bus 402 or other communication mechanismfor communicating information, and a processor 404 coupled with the bus402 for processing information. Computer system 400 also includes a mainmemory 406, such as a random access memory (RAM) or other dynamicstorage device, coupled to the bus 402 for storing information andinstructions to be executed by processor 404. Main memory 406 also maybe used for storing temporary variables or other intermediateinformation during execution of instructions to be executed by processor404. Computer system 400 further includes a read only memory (ROM) 408or other static storage device coupled to the bus 402 for storing staticinformation and instructions for the processor 404. A storage device410, which may be one or more of a floppy disk, a flexible disk, a harddisk, flash memory-based storage medium, magnetic tape or other magneticstorage medium, a compact disk (CD)-ROM, a digital versatile disk(DVD)-ROM, or other optical storage medium, or any other storage mediumfrom which processor 404 can read, is provided and coupled to the bus402 for storing information and instructions (e.g., operating systems,applications programs and the like).

Computer system 400 may be coupled via the bus 402 to a display 412,such as a flat panel display, for displaying information to a computeruser. An input device 414, such as a keyboard including alphanumeric andother keys, is coupled to the bus 402 for communicating information andcommand selections to the processor 404. Another type of user inputdevice is cursor control device 416, such as a mouse, a trackball, orcursor direction keys for communicating direction information andcommand selections to processor 404 and for controlling cursor movementon the display 412. Other user interface devices, such as microphones,speakers, etc. are not shown in detail but may be involved with thereceipt of user input and/or presentation of output.

The processes referred to herein may be implemented by processor 404executing appropriate sequences of computer-readable instructionscontained in main memory 406. Such instructions may be read into mainmemory 406 from another computer-readable medium, such as storage device410, and execution of the sequences of instructions contained in themain memory 406 causes the processor 404 to perform the associatedactions. In alternative embodiments, hard-wired circuitry orfirmware-controlled processing units (e.g., field programmable gatearrays) may be used in place of or in combination with processor 404 andits associated computer software instructions to implement theinvention. The computer-readable instructions may be rendered in anycomputer language including, without limitation, C#, C/C++, Fortran,COBOL, PASCAL, assembly language, markup languages (e.g., HTML, SGML,XML, VoXML), and the like, as well as object-oriented environments suchas the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Java™ and thelike. In general, all of the aforementioned terms are meant to encompassany series of logical steps performed in a sequence to accomplish agiven purpose, which is the hallmark of any computer-executableapplication. Unless specifically stated otherwise, it should beappreciated that throughout the description of the present invention,use of terms such as “processing”, “computing”, “calculating”,“determining”, “displaying” or the like, refer to the action andprocesses of an appropriately programmed computer system, such ascomputer system 400 or similar electronic computing device, thatmanipulates and transforms data represented as physical (electronic)quantities within its registers and memories into other data similarlyrepresented as physical quantities within its memories or registers orother such information storage, transmission or display devices.

Computer system 400 also includes a communication interface 418 coupledto the bus 202. Communication interface 418 provides a two-way datacommunication channel with a computer network, such as network 130 inFIG. 1, which provides connectivity to and among the various serversdiscussed above. For example, communication interface 418 may be a localarea network (LAN) card to provide a data communication connection to acompatible LAN, which itself is communicatively coupled to the Internetthrough one or more Internet service provider networks. The precisedetails of such communication paths are not critical to the presentinvention. What is important is that computer system 400 can send andreceive messages and data through the communication interface 418 and inthat way communication with hosts accessible via the Internet.

The various databases described herein are computer-based record keepingsystems. Stated differently, these databases are each a combination ofcomputer hardware and software that acts together to allow for thestorage and retrieval of information (data). Accordingly, they mayresemble computer system 400, and are often characterized by havingstorage mediums capable of accommodating significant amounts ofinformation.

FIG. 5 illustrates a computer system 500 from the point of view of itssoftware architecture. Computer system 500 may be server 120 referred toabove or, with appropriate applications comprising a softwareapplication layer 504, may be a client system or one of the host serversfor a takeoff and/or landing site.

The various hardware components of computer system 500 are representedas a hardware layer 502. An operating system 504 abstracts the hardwarelayer and acts as a host for various applications 506 a-506 m, that runon computer system 500. In the case of server 120, the operating systemacts as a host for a matching engine 508 and decision engine 510, whichare configured to perform the processes described above to provide adinsertions. For a server 102 and/or 108, the operating system may host aweb server application 512, which provides access from the clientcomputers via web browsers. Such a web server may also be hosted onserver 120 to provide an interface by which the host servers 102 and 108may communicate with server 120. In the case of a client system, theoperating system acts as a host for a Web browser application 514, butnot a matching engine, decision engine or (typically) a web server 512.

As alluded to above, network 130 may include the Internet and thevarious servers and client computers communicatively coupled thereto mayinclude computer systems, such as computer system 400, that are made upof one or more processors, associated memory (typically volatile andnon-volatile) and other storage devices and peripherals that allow forconnection to the Internet or other networks. The precise hardwareconfiguration of the hosting and client resources is generally notcritical to the present invention, nor are the precise algorithms usedto implement the services and methods described herein. Instead, thefocus is on the nature of the services provided by the presentinvention.

Insofar as the foregoing discussion concerns domains, URLs, links, andthe like, it should help to understand that in order to facilitatecommunications between hosts on the Internet, each host has a numericalInternet protocol (IP) address and a unique fully qualified domain name.In the case of the hypothetical host with an IP address of123.456.78.91, the fully qualified domain name might be“computer.domain.com”. In its most generic form, a fully qualifieddomain name consists of three elements: a hostname (“computer”), adomain name (“domain”) and a top level domain (“com”). A given hostlooks up the IP addresses of other hosts on the Internet through asystem known as domain name service. If an Internet user desires toestablish a connection with a Web page hosted at computer.domain.com,the Internet user might enter into a Web browser program a URL thatincludes the domain name and domain of the host, e.g., “http:www.domain.com”, where the first element of the URL is a transferprotocol (most commonly, “http” standing for hypertext transferprotocol), “www” standing for the World Wide Web and “domain.com”(collectively, these elements other than the transfer protocol are analias for the fully qualified domain name of the hostcomputer.domain.com). Once a URL is entered into the browser, the domainname service matches it to and provides the corresponding IP address123.456.78.91, allowing the browser to contact the desired host.Hyperlinks or links are then specially encoded portions of a web page(often a name or other text) that include a reference to a host by wayof such aliases or IP addresses.

Thus, methods and systems for inserting appropriate links into anongoing conversation, which links point to other material that usersengaged in the conversation might find helpful and relevant to theconversation, have been described. The matching function provided by thepresent invention uses as inputs models of content from a landing page,a creative (the message to be inserted into a takeoff page), and contentfrom the takeoff page. The models of these components can be words orother labels derived by other means including, but not limited to,speech act labels, entities or other special words, or contributorproperties. The resulting match can be regarded as a two-part matchinvolving a match between the creative and the content from the takeoffpage and then the creative plus the takeoff page and the landing page.Weights control which match is emphasized in the final score. Thematching process outputs a scored list of possible creatives forinsertion in the takeoff page and a separate decision mechanism makesthe final selection from that scored list. This decision process cantake into account various factors such as campaign managementrequirements (e.g., creative exposure limits) and conversationalstatistics to decide whether to place a creative or which creative todeliver. Further, determining which, if any of the creatives to bedisplayed may include information about the devices on which thecreative may be displayed. For example, screen size limit or text stringlength limit.

In various embodiments of the invention, the decision process may alsoincorporate learning based on past experiences with the creatives. Forexample, user interaction with previous instances of the creatives wheninserted into takeoff pages may be tracked and used when deciding which,if any, creatives to provide for insertion. Moreover, such experiencemay be used in the matching process when deciding which introductions,calls to action and other components to combine with one another to forma creative. Likewise, past experience with creative placement within atakeoff page may be monitored by server 120 and used to aid the decisionabout when to insert a creative in a takeoff page. Further, features ormetrics regarding the conversation, such as conversational velocity, maybe monitored and used as a guide for deciding whether and when to insertcreatives. Such functions may be incorporated in either the decisionengine or matching engine as appropriate.

In the foregoing discussion, the focus has been on creating links toguide users from conversational content to curated content, but ingeneral the present methods and systems may be employed to create andinsert links between any content of different modes. So, for example,the present methods and systems can be used to deliver curated contentto sites hosting conversational content. In this regard, curated contentcan be regarded broadly as any content under editorial control of a siteoperator, or even profiles of individuals (e.g., Web-based biographiesor profiles commonly associated with social networking sites or serviceprovider sites). For example, links to such profiles may be used tosuggest certain people (e.g., a subject matter expert) to join aconversation or answer a question, or even the reverse, i.e., suggestthat a person join a particular conversation because he/she wouldprovide information of value to that conversation. Thus, the referralprocess afforded by the present invention operates in a direction fromconversation to curated (a takeoff page hosting conversational contentto a landing page hosting curated content, or vice-versa. Indeed, onecould use the present methods for mapping conversations toconversations, for example across on-line communities.

Given the various instances in which the present systems and methodsfind application, it should be recognized that the examples presented inthe foregoing description were provided merely for purposes ofillustration and should not be read as unduly limiting the presentinvention.

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: recognizing, by a server,postings made by an individual to an electronic medium, selecting, by adecision engine of the server and from a plurality of candidatecreatives, one or more of the candidate creatives for presentation tothe individual via the electronic medium, the selection being made, inpart, through correlation of user intentions evidenced by informationextracted from the postings with content deemed applicable for the userintentions as represented by the candidate creatives; and presenting,via the electronic medium, one or more of the selected candidatecreatives.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the information extractedfrom the postings includes some or all of: speech acts, entities orother special words, or contributor properties of the postings presentedvia the electronic medium.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein thecreatives include links to landing sites.